Novum Organum

This entirely new classroom edition of Francis Bacon's great work of 1620, a founding document of empiricism and the scientific method, contains a new introduction and notes by translators/editors Urbach and Gibson. Index.

Sir Francis Bacon's ''Novum Organum'' is a treatise meant to adjust the thought and methodology of learning about and understanding science and nature. Learn about the four Idols and the inductive method outlined in this keystone philosophy work. This is now known as the Baconian method. The title is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. Ultimately, the Novum Organum is defined as the ''New Tool.'' But, a new tool for what, and why is it 'new'? In this book Bacon demonstrates the use of the scientific method to discover knowledge about the natural world. Many of the examples in this volume concern the nature of heat and energy.

The 'Novum Organum,' in the shape in which its author left it, is only a fragment of the larger work which Bacon contemplated under that title, as adequately representing the second part of the 'Great Instauration.' Nevertheless, though only a fragment, the 'Novum Organum,' and especially the first book, is the most carefully written of all Bacon's philosophical works. Moreover, as describing the new method of which the renovation of knowledge was to be the result, it is the keystone of the entire system.